Youtube Mobile vs Youtube on your TV and the impact of TrueView (updated)

That is incredibly interesting to me. Why ? Because it means that Youtube has done a great job of training its users. They have trained them to understand that there is no reason to watch Youtube video on any device other than mobile. Watching video on a mobile device is good enough . That is great news for Youtube mobile monetization . Advertisers want to reach mobile users and Youtube can deliver.

It also suggests that rather than using mobile devices as a discovery device and flicking it to a bigger screen like a TV, they are exclusively using mobile as a discovery and viewing device. I never thought that users would want to tie up their phones by sending their Youtube video to a bigger screen. I don’t think people perceive there is enough of an improvement in the viewing experience to tie up both their phones and their big screen tvs. It looks like youtube users are satisfied with the mobile video viewing experience

Which leads to whether or not we will see Youtube be a viable source of content for our big screens ? TV manufacturers are making Youtube a core part of their application offerings. Their expectation is that Youtube will be a destination for video that will compete with traditional TV. Personally I have always thought that this was a fail because it was too much work for the consumer to find the content they want. Youtube has tried to organize content into channels, genres and branded content as a way to combat this problem. The idea was that if users could develop an affinity for branded content they would be happy to load the Youtube app on their TV and click on the branded content.

A funny thing happened on this journey. Youtube walked into funding higher end content they hoped would provide viewing experiences competitive to traditional TV and almost as quickly walked away from it leaving their content partners upset and with very difficult financial models. Youtube is all about generating viewing minutes and the more expensive content obviously didn’t generate the minutes they had hoped for.

Not only that , but with the amazing success of TrueView they could finally monetize all the junky user generated videos on mobile and the web. If someone watching a cat video chooses to watch an ad rather than skip it, thats a good thing for the advertiser no matter what the UGC video shows.

So they have far less need to generate more minutes. With TrueView letting consumers skip the ad after a few not too intrusive seconds, they could not only serve ads around UGC, but they could learn what ads worked, on who and where. They didn’t need the big studios to generate more minutes for them. TrueView let them find higher margin minutes that were already in the YT ecosystem.

So what does this all mean ?

I believe Youtube realizes that its future is all about mobile. That while some users will throw video content to larger devices (after all who doesn’t want to show your friends the kids soccer game or the vacation videos you recorded on your phone at six flags on a big screen), the super majority and then some of YT consumers will be perfectly content to find and consume video on their mobile devices. Our HDTVs will continue to be dominated by traditional TV sources with increasing usage of long form video OTT providers like Netflix and Hulu and gaming consoles

It also means that professionally generated content is pretty much doomed on YT. If YT can monetize, particularly on mobile UGC with far higher margins, why would they pay 55pct of revenue to the channels ? The uploading of videos on YT is accelerating, which means the UGC inventory for TrueView is accelerating as well. While they will continue to offer great tools, why would YT offer any financial support or incentives to professional content creators ? There just is no reason to. TrueView changed the game.

Tell the World Please !

77 thoughts on “Youtube Mobile vs Youtube on your TV and the impact of TrueView (updated)”

Mobile is absolutely the wave of the future…if not the present. I don’t have time to check out YouTube videos at work. Ninety percent of the time, I’m checking out YouTube while I’m sitting on the couch from my iPhone. I hate the app, though. I prefer to just go to YouTube’s mobile website. Why is everyone shoving apps in our faces? Can’t we all just use the mobile web?

It’s ease-of-use. If someone sends me a link for a YT video, I can access that on my smart-phone with a single step. Click the link in the email, and, voila, i’m watching the video.

Conversely, to access that same video via the TV is a pain in the rump. Even with a seamless home-set-up, odds are i have to go through several steps with the remote (if not multiple remotes), access the app, deal with the clunky interface, and then suffer the (relatively) slow loads.

The truth is that while YouTube is immensely popular, people are only watching a fraction of the content–the stuff under 5 minutes. No one wants to bother with the longer stuff using their mobile devices. Solve the tv interface problem and YouTube, et al become even more central, as people will watch the longer videos on the bigger screens.

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I agree with this as things exist today. But as a few people have mentioned, I have found a few “personalities” on Youtube that resonate with me and I follow them (check out Ed Bassmaster, Jack Vale, and Schmoyoho).

As this set of users grow I find myself more and more hitting the Youtube app on my Google TV box as a replacement for skipping through the channels to waste time (once all of my DVR’d regular shows are done, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, 60 Minutes, etc).

In essence, I have DVR’d my Youtube shows. And I’d rather catch up on Ed Bassmaster videos than aimlessly channel surf on TV looking for something good.

Mark, you are right. There is work involved here, but its not a lot of work.
As Google finds ways to better automate my Youtube lean-back experience I will do this more and more.

And I hope that the ad dollars flow over and incentive Ed Bassmaster and we can get rid of the the 900 hillbilly handfishing reality shows on TV.

I think a lot of people’s comments don’t realize what you’ve stated Mark:
1) “I believe Youtube realizes that its future is all about mobile.”
2) “It also means that professionally generated content is pretty much doomed on YT”

I think you are spot-on!

What people are failing to realize is that this “new” media delivery system is still a very young business model.

How long did it take to develop a business model around Gutenburg’s printing press? How long did it take Hollywood to develop “Talkies”? How long did it take to fully develop the small screen – T.V.? How long did it take to develop Cable television?

The technology behind the Internet is a new delivery system for content of all types… Youtube is finding out that they created the five minute or less attention machine for the 21st Century and once a company establishes their offering (Microsoft, IBM, Shell Oil, etc…) it is hard to change direction. Mobile is perfect for them!

Look at Hulu – they are well known for longer attention span based content and have created a business model around Media on Demand!

Netflix is working hard to add original, long format media, to some success.

There are so many options for new media companies to create delivery models that are destructive to the old media delivery business model.

I’m still waiting for time when Cable a la carte is available. If the content creators such as AMC, HBO, Showtime, FX, Turner would get brave and make it happen, we would see an explosion in media delivery.

Look at what has happened to original content over the past 30 years. When I was a kid we had an antenna and at most 6 stations – they told us what to watch and when and I had to be parked in front of the living room T.V.

Then, we got VCR’s and CABLE! Our attention was split and we enjoyed the freedom of more content. We could watch what they wanted us to but when we wanted, but still in the living room.

Now, we have the content we like, when we like it and where we like it.

The dirty secret? All this content when and where we want it costs us more money.

I’ll admit this is the first billionaire blog I’ve seen, the viewer numbers must be insane, but your presumption that youtube can monetize the mobile space simply can’t happen.
Mobile screen real estate is extremely limited by its nature, any sort of discernible ad, like a picture of a car with a logo of the company, is gonna take up a huge amount of the screen, something most users won’t accept even if it’s youtube exclusive content, who wants to watch a video when 1/4 of the space is taken up by an ad?
Of course youtube can try and push mobile viewing as hard as they want but it will either lead to them dropping intensive monetization, (large, expensive ads), implementing a subscription plan, and face heavy alienation of the existing user- base, or just abandoning making money in the mobile space. None of which can grow youtube, and google’s, revenue by any meaningful amount.
Then the other possibility is that new technology is introduced that obsoletes normal smartphone and which the screen real estate issue won’t apply, but anything that big to disrupt the entire phone/telecommuniations industry will make youtube look like peanuts.

I would also like to, in regards to other comments posted here, remind people there actually is a lot of very well produced content available on Youtube. A lot of indie studios produce mini-series and upload them to Youtube; stuff on the same level as The Guild. The problem is that much of it gets buried in the Youtube search results, so without a good budget for marketing the indie studios find it difficult to use the platform to build an audience. Youtube has a curation problem; specifically, the platform is terrible at curating high-quality content. The search algorithm assumes popular means quality, and from a certain perspective that is true, but not if you’re talking about quality shows that can attract the kind of ad revenue traditional broadcasting is used to.

It’s hard to say exactly how Youtube will go in the future based on analytic data alone. I run a MCN and have used the service since 2006, practically since it came out.

One of the toughest things is the fact their Analytics is weird. It’s not the most accurate in regards to “mobile views”. Any view that Youtube can’t detect the origin of is counted as a “mobile view”, including someone copy and pasting the URL into their browser. You can see this clearly state in the Youtube Analytics screen for “direct traffic”.

Another thing to bear in mind; due to the privacy policy of Google Accounts, anyone who is logged into a Google account has their view listed as “unknown origin” in Google and Youtube Analytics. And because Youtube combines mobile views and “unknown origin” views as the same thing, it’s hard to know for sure how many views are actually coming from mobile devices.

Basically, Google is fiddling with the numbers.

I do think there is a demand for higher quality content watchable on Youtube. That’s why my company developed and is launching this app on Monday, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79aIm5xItyQ It’s specifically designed to make watching Youtube work more like traditional cable.

TV presents very little content that I am interested in any more. With all of the channels to choose from, I generally find that there is less and less that I find entertaining. Sports, educational content and the odd movie here and there are all that I watch any more. And for that content, I generally record most of it and watch later, breezing through the commercials. Advertising doesn’t hit its mark with me on TV. You Tube advertising is generally just 15-30 seconds of me doing something else until my video starts. If the entertainment industry can figure out how to motivate me to buy the advertised product, it will be a paradigm shift in the delivery. My interest in buying products is generally started from a search engine and whatever my short attention span desires these days.

I think at the end of he day it’s about the user interface. If someone can solve the Gordian knot of how to make access to all that YT content easy enough for a large device, then it might be able to make the transition, but if YT doesn’t get significantly easier to use then it will continue to be a place for niche content.

@Rockshrines… absolutely right! I have a middle school kid. At home all the music she listens to is on youtube. Her and her friends are constantly on youtube listening to music on their phones. Youtube and musicians have perpetuated the free music mentality. As an independent musician you want to be “heard” so you upload live videos of your band or music videos and “share” them. Hopefully someone will discover you and purchase your music… but that won’t happen because they can listen to it for free at home or on any mobile device. I also think Youtube by allowing people to make mash-up videos and interpretative videos of a song is cool and promotes art but at the same time the artist never sees a dime from the 30 videos with his or her song in it. Sometimes people look at statistics like those mentioned in this post topic and run with what they want to think those stats are going to mean. Few have the ability to look at the harsh reality of it all and would rather join Mark’s mutual admiration society.

We’d be curious to see what percentage of videos viewed on mobile devices are music/lyric videos. When people don’t have a song on their phone that they want to listen to, the first place they turn to is YouTube. Our guess would be situations like that account for the majority of mobile video views and explain why mobile views are so high.

As soon as I hear someone say cat videos when talking about Youtube, I know they don’t know what the hell they are talking about when it comes to the platform. Is Youtube a place for high quality scripted content i.e. a drama or sitcom? As Mark link to in his post not at the current CPM rates because most of these channels are not getting enough views to make it profitable. Guess what though most new sitcom and dramas on TV get cancel after a year. So why the hell do these people think they can come on to Youtube and create a hit in a year.

I don’t think professional produced content is doom on Youtube because that’s what advertisers what to advertise against and they want verticals they can target to reach certain markets. You really can’t do that with the inconsistency of user generate content. BTW, most of the content that get uploaded to Youtube doesn’t get watched at all.

I agree, Mark. Sounds like some of the observations I have made. I am a video content producer and writer for Fortune 500 companies. I have a technology biz too I plan to take global in 2 years. I am getting into video affiliate marketing now and plan to use this on mobile technology in the future for marketing of the business. Thanks for the helpful tips! P.S. I bought your book too!

Interesting perspective. However, I offer this: Perhaps as modern iTV’s take over in the next generation of television/online combination, people will become more accustomed to watching online video via iTV. Who wouldn’t prefer a bigger screen no matter what they’re viewing? Imagine watching a show and clicking your remote to point & buy the product they are showing on ESPN or Shark Tank?

So, I think it’s more about new technology being introduced and the audience adjusting to it. YouTube is positioned perfectly. So is Netflix. And, as much as people hate to believe it, so is cable…a TV + ISP provider with Emmy-award winning programming. It will be interesting to see how it plays out!

I rarely see that you respond to posts Mark, so I do hope you read this. You say “they (Youtube) hoped would provide viewing experiences competitive to traditional TV and almost as quickly walked away from it leaving….” What idiots! The reason Youtube is what it is , is because it is not like traditional TV. I happen to think you are way off base. Traditional TV shows now mimic what you see on Youtube. TV Show after TV show is now filled with those mindless idiotic Youtube videos used as filler. Chelsea Lately, Anderson Cooper, The Shaq O’Neil show, Tosh.0, Ridiculousness… It is American stupidity at it’s finest. Every network has to now have some TV show that compiles mindless Youtube videos with a celebrity host. I rarely use a mobile device. I don’t feel I need to be submissive to devices or at everyone’s beck and call. The most disturbing thing I saw with mobile devices( in this case tablets) this year was people bringing them to family dinners so everyone could look at more mindless stuff. I do have a Youtube channel for my business. It serves me well. It gets a decent amount of views which does correlate into sales. I refuse to run Adwords on the channel or in any of my videos simply because the idea of Youtube was to be ad free and I do know what my audiance wants. The TV networks that use the clips get union free content.

Mobile uploading and viewing patterns still have to be analyzed. Do mobile users generate more spontaneous responses to advertisers, or not?

Mobile uploads possibly mean the video content was not edited as much as conventional video projects, which creates a battle between time wasting content and efficiently edited worthwhile content.

Just what does 40% mobile uploads really mean? It could mean a quagmire of difficult to wade through content that makes advertisers nervous. If a mobile uploader takes too long to get to the intriguing part of their video, they annoy the viewer, and that is more likely to happen if there is less editing.

On the other hand, the woman bus passenger yelling at the young boy to sit down had no editing yet one cannot look away as the women keeps lecturing for another minute and a half even after the kid has taken a seat, and there probably is an ideal advertising partner out there waiting to be found.

Could we one day see a youtube that is actually split into three factions, low budget amateur products, high end fare, and mobile reality? The sooner the better, maybe.

I think your spot on Mark. The issue with youtube integration with the TV is that it is NOT easy to use. Ease of use is what users want with youtube, and the mobile device is a great way to achieve it. Simple menus, easy access, and swipe later…your viewing what you want. Unless TV’s become a ton more easy to use (i.e. voice recognition, better processors, hand motions) I don’t see a lot of people using it simply because of the damn remote. It’s a pain in the butt. Totally agree with your post, and I love the interest you’ve taken in this topic. This concept is something other start-ups and large companies need to pay attention too. 2012 was the biggest year for mobile devices thus far and there are more smart-phones in the marketplace. Everyone needs to be focused on easily accesible content, services, and business through mobile interfaces…we’re going to see a big boom in that space and the smart companies like youtube will be on top! Great post Mark!

Mark, studies show mobile video will grow by 60% each year for the next five years. Smartphone adoption is already greater than 50% in many countries. The demographics for YouTube remain primarily 13-34 male (yes, *13*!). The biggest viewing numbers go to such youth-oriented material as gaming, music video parodies, homebrew comics, and mashups.

On the other hand, Smart TV adoption is slow and most Smart TVs remain unexploited in the home, the equivalent of the blinking unset timer on the VCR that symbolized old-fogeyism for our generation. Further, the YouTube demo is not “cord-cutting”; they are not connecting to old-fogey cable in the first place.

YouTube would be blind to not see which side of its toast is buttered.

YouTube has, though, created its new “One Channel” layout specifically to be universal across all platforms. It doesn’t merely zoom from smartphone to computer to TV, it actually expands to show new information as the viewing device becomes larger. They know that this generation will eventually acquire — and *operate* — their parents’ Smart TVs.

The future is going to be extreme. The same thing I call up on my 3″ smartphone will also be able to be routed directly on-demand to one of the 30′ screens in your theaters.

As a filmmaker, I am trying to grasp the fact that a movie I make today must somehow have the same emotional impact when seen in a dark theater on a 50′ screen with multi-channel pristine sound and when seen while riding a bus, on a 3″ screen and tinny earbuds. Wow.

i agree with Mark… YouTube tried the big screen thing and realized it actually costs money. More than they were able to monitize through low paid online ads and click throughs. Their space is on phones and tablets. They own it, and people are moving to it, so why move?

People watch TV for long-tail premium video entertainment. Cute cat videos or music videos at your fingertips is just filler content. To compete with TV you need high production value video that can entertain the masses, and a significant enough quantity of it to appeal to a diverse set of users — for example, live music.

The problems are broad-based streamers leave the complex video production to the artists and nightclubs, and they have no way to make money off shows (unless you consider a CPM of $2.50 on YTL significant). In addition, because of the complexities with live-to-mobile advertising, YouTube does not stream live to iOS apps because they cannot monetize users.

What if you could automate the production of TV-like quality content, streaming live night after night with fixed camera technology from top nightclubs and music venues, and could advertise across all major devices in a way that doesn’t interrupt the underlying HD video-audio stream? You’d have a business model a couple of VCs have compared to broadcast.com’s vision, and the type of aggregated premium content that could change the way people consume entertainment media.

While I have a major distaste for your Mavericks as I sit here ready to watch my Spurs take on the Heat in game 1 of the NBA finals, I couldn’t agree with you more Mr. Cuban. TV analytics in Austin, TX are revealing some interesting data and your position on YouTube’s role in the industry is accurate for a couple of reasons. 1) TV’s role has always been to deliver content that is professionally created, produced, written. That is what we expect from that device. YouTube’s content does not fit the bill. 2) Sharing video is one of the most engaging ways for one to say, “this is important, relevant, funny, or special to me” without even one word of text to support the shared video content. This is the clout one earns over time within their social network, and video supports that effort better than anything else. The timeliness and personal factor of mobile meshes well with YouTube’s ability to generate that type of sharable content. I’ve always been a fan of your business acumen. I think I’ll start following more of your content, now!

Mark:
Yes, but for whom? As it turns out, the actionary demographic is bifurcating. Diarrhea of content is one thing. It works and streams well on mobile. Calls to action, play and stream well on mobile. Almost all content needs to be readable and efficient on mobile because an ever-increasing population first and foremost has their first experience with new content, to them, on mobile for everything from news, events, humor, shock, to movie trailers and advertisements.

However, brains like resolution and the physical constraints of the small, no matter how clear, cannot satisfy most true movie and entertainment fans. They prove over and over they will not permanently settle for less. Add to that, which is across the age boards, the fact that there is a massive segment of the population aging into vision, hearing and comfort problems, and clarity, audio fidelity and comfort requirements will only increase.

In my opinion, you are certainly spot on, when you diagnose the difficulties in navigating through content. Yet, that is only exacerbated in the smaller mobile world. I believe mobile is destined to navigate and control the larger world of fidelity and not replace it. The group that understands that will rule the bridge, as all the other players try to deliver the world to everyone and never refine the data access and control.

Mark my words, when the space between your eyes becomes a significant portion of width of the display on the device, there is an inherent threshold of access that cannot be overcome by the masses usage or acceptance. In other words, watching quality content cannot be done comfortably by human beings on significantly small scales. Clearly it can be embraced and used, when there are not other solutions. However, the future winners will in all likelihood better understand and hold out for better ways to use all worlds of interface and display. Right now, we are focussing the world on our hands. Things will never swing from that but great entertainment and engagement in depth will never quite get there, especially for the older generations.

YouTube needs the future to be mobile, which it clearly is for some aspects. That still does not make it so.

I wonder if this trend will continu with the shared data plans that customers are being forced to adapt. Myself, i am holding out on my unlimited data plan as long as possible. Espically with youtube, one app that uses an emense amout of data (compared to otherea)

I agree, I am fascinated by the use of mobile devices for video content users are watching on the go. But, I also believe that using mobile/tablet devices to navigate and control the big screen content is the inevitable (and bright) future of TV . For any video I stumble on via facebook or web search, mobile is enough for me on the fly. But for content that I am interested in and enjoy, or watch with others (Shark Tank for example) I prefer a viewing experience that offers the ease of browsing afforded by tablet or mobile device and the ability to push to the big screen for great sound and picture qualilty. I think it’s obvious that the next generation of moble OS and the elusive Apple iTV will not tie up the mobile device at all, but instead serve supplementary content, allow you to interact in the social space surrounding the program and show you which of your friends are watching or have watched the same program. This makes for a much more efficient viewing experience while, allows new content to circulate and also socializes viewing. The days of “flipping through the channels” are certainly looking quite archaic!

The reason YouTube is successful on mobile and not on TV is because YouTube watching experience is very intimate and personal. Most people who are YouTube regulars watch and follow personalities and not just content. YouTube is wasting it’s money building professional content as it is obviously not working. YouTube is the ultimate reality TV network and a place where people go to connect with other people.

YouTube is an incredible platform for people and business but most people trying to throw money at it are doing the wrong thing to create compelling content as they don’t truly understand the audience on YouTube.

I watch YouTube on my XBox and there are some interesting niche channels that provide surprisingly high quality. It does seem like YouTube is promoting videos that have a longer run length instead of the short quick videos that would work on mobile. I’m thinking of MinutePhysics which recently complained about it on Twitter

I tried Youtube on my LG SMART TV and found it to very, very slow. I would have used it and kept using if it was as fast as my mobile. It was not my internet speed (10megs), but the TV itself. I see this catching on once the TV manufactuers speed up the programing inside of the TV itself.

I am a Sports Management graduate student at Sam Houston State and I admire your drive to succeed in the business of sport. I am interested in moving into the Dallas Market preferably the Mavericks. I am not asking for a handout from you. I would just love to interview you for an assignment in class. If this is something you would be willing to do I would be grateful.